Inno Aero Flush Roof Rack for Naked Roofs - Aluminum - Black - Qty 2
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2004 Ford Expedition
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2004 Ford Expedition
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This aerodynamic roof rack mounts flush on your roof for a factory look. Crossbars with push-down rubber strips in top channels work with channel-mount and clamp-on accessories. Installs on your vehicle's naked roof.
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Alternate Instructions
Videos are provided as a guide only. Refer to manufacturer installation instructions and specs for complete information.
This is Curt with etrailer and today we're gonna take a look at the INNO Arrow flush roof rack. We're gonna see how it fits and how it installs on our 2025 Mazda CX-5. The CX-5 has a decent amount of cargo space in the rear, but if you've got a car full of passengers and all their stuff too, you're gonna run out of that space really, really quickly. A roof rack is an excellent way to get those extra items to and from your destination. It's also a great way to haul items that you don't want riding in the car with you or items that simply won't fit. So the kind of things that we can put up here would be your cargo carriers and your cargo baskets, there are ski carriers, fish and pole carriers, all sorts of different things that can go up on a roof rack like this.
Now this is a flush roof rack, which means that the crossbar's dead end into the tower. They don't overhang it. So if you planned on putting an awning or a kayak carrier on it, I would probably recommend an overhanging bar. Generally speaking, those types of rooftop accessories require an overhanging bar in order to use them properly. Luckily, we have some available from INNO right here at etrailer.
So aside from it being a flush bar, it's also an aero style bar which has this kind of ovular shape. It's a lot more aerodynamic, therefore it's gonna be a lot quieter on the road than your traditional round or square bars. But while we're kind of looking at it from the top here, I want to talk a little bit about the flush system. Again, one of the things about flush roof racks is that they do tend to have a much nicer look or a more OEM look to the vehicle because they're not overhanging, they look actually fit to it. The problem or the downside, I should say rather, is that it kind of forces you to put everything toward the middle.
You don't have as much bar space to work with. So generally speaking, you're only really gonna have one accessory up here at a time and it's gonna be toward the middle. Luckily, the CX-5 isn't too tall of a vehicle, so it doesn't create that many issues for it, but it is something to keep in mind depending on what you wanted to carry on your roof. The other thing about this roof rack is that it has a weight capacity of 165 pounds, however, you always wanna double check the owner's manual of your vehicle for its rooftop weight capacity. If it's lower than 165 pounds, that's gonna be the capacity that you're gonna have to stick with.
So let's take a few measurements and see how this fits on the roof of our CX-5. The first measurement I'm gonna take is gonna be from the center of the front bar to the center of the second bar. This is gonna be our crossbar spread. And the reason this is such an important measurement is that every rooftop accessory has a minimum and a maximum crossbar spread for you to use it. The crossbar spread we have up here is 27 inches. So make sure that whenever you're looking at your accessories, 27 inches is an acceptable spread. The other thing I'm gonna take a look at is how high does this come up off the top of the vehicle How much height does it add So this only adds about 2-1/2 inches to the top of the vehicle. However, that is something you're gonna have to be very conscious of because the shark fin back here stands at about almost three inches. So anything that you're sitting up here, just make sure that there's some clearance for that shark fin antenna back there. Otherwise the bar does not sit higher than the top of it. I'm also gonna take a look at what kind of space we have underneath our bar, and for that we've got about an 1-1/4. Now for most rooftop accessories, if it's a clamp mount, it's gonna be able to go on there pretty easily I would think, but you want to be conscious of it because I have seen rooftop accessories with very bulky clamps and you might have issue with that clearance underneath here. Now, as far as how much bar length you actually have to use, the bar in the back is gonna be shorter than the bar in the front, and that's because the roof up here on the CX-5 tapers as we get to the back of it. So really the bar space that we have on this back bar is the bar space we have to work with. And if I'm using a clamp mount accessory, I'm gonna go from the inside edge of our tower right here in order to see how much we actually have. What we have is about 36-1/2 inches of bar space. So just make sure that the clamps on whatever your accessory is can accept that 35, 36 inch space there. But if you want to use a T-track accessory up on the top, that's gonna give you almost 40 inches to be able to use that. So just bear that in mind when you're looking at rooftop accessories to go on the top of your CX-5. Now installation on this is fairly simple. You know it's gonna provide all that you need in order to do it. So follow along and we'll show you exactly how we got these installed on our CX-5. As we begin our installation just a few things that you should know. One, the towers that you have are side specific, so make sure that you lay your crossbar out accordingly before starting the installation. The wider portion of the bar would be facing front with the narrower portion facing the rear of the vehicle. By right and left, they mean left being driver's side, right being passenger side. So we've already installed the passenger side on this bar. We're gonna be showing you how to install the front bar, and once we have everything oriented, we also everything that you need, INNO provides. Any of the tools that you need, including a measuring tape as well. Now when it comes to measurements, there are a couple of trip ups that I ran into, so we'll go over that as we get to them. But first and foremost, I'm gonna take my tower. They are labeled right and left. It's stamped right here. So this one says L, it's going on my driver's side. The one I've got installed over here has an R for passenger. And I'm gonna go ahead and on the underside of your bar, you're gonna find this empty cavity here. I'm just gonna slide that over just like that all the way out the end and I end up with this tray here and that's where this piece is gonna end up going. It's gonna go in from the bottom. So I'm gonna just put this into place just like that and then I'm gonna slide it back in all the way up to the point. Now I gotta depress this to keep it moving, but all the way up to the point that this wider cavity is just in this bigger opening like it is right here. Now I'm gonna take my tower and my foot pad. Now read the instructions because the rubber pads and the clamps are going to be specific to the front and the rear bar. The front bar takes 421 so I'm gonna go ahead and install that now. It's a lot easier to do this before it goes on the bar. So it lines up, you can see the indentations for the top of our screws there, lines up just like that. And I'm just gonna push it all the way around and make sure it's sitting in there flush. Okay, now that I've got a good fit with that, we'll take a look at the top where we've got these two tabs and this bolt. Those are gonna fit in here accordingly. We've got this wider slide here for this tab. We've got the hole there for our bolt. We've got another hole for this tab here. So what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna drop this wider portion into here. It's not gonna drop all the way down though until we get to the edge of the bar. So as I put it in to place just like that, you notice that there's a gap right here. It's not going all the way down, but I still have the ability to slide this all the way to the edge until it drops into place just like that. Now, I could still move it forward and and back and things like that, but this is about where I need it to be. This is where the measurements in the instructions get a little bit funky. They're not quite accurate, mainly because the instructions that they give you are for a different type of tower that are much smaller than this. But I've gone ahead and done the installation on this already so that I can get those measurements accurate for you. So the measurement that it asked for is gonna go from the center of the bar to the edge of your tower. Now what I found out was that the rear bar, that distance is 18 inches to get it accurate. On the front bar, I figured out that it's about 19-1/2 inches. Take my INNO tape, measure from the center all the way out and I'm looking for it to but right up with the edge here at 19-1/2 inches. I gotta bring it in just a hair. I'm gonna double check that measurement and I should be right on point just where it is. Now that I have it in place, I'm gonna take this tool, which is the large Allen key. This bolt right here through the top I'm gonna go ahead and I'm going to tighten that down. Now what that's doing is securing the crossbar into the tower, but also keeping it from sliding back and forth. So I'm just gonna get this tightened down as much as possible. Now let's talk a little bit about bar placement. In the instructions it's gonna give you two different measurements. They're both gonna be taken from the door seam and it's gonna tell you where it needs to be for our second bar, and it's gonna tell you where your front bar needs to go. So it's gonna measure from the door seam to that bolt in the middle, and our front bar is gonna be at 7-3/4 inches. So I'm gonna go ahead and from that door seam, measure it over, just need to nudge it forward just a hair and where it's 7-3/4 inches. I'm gonna do that same measurement on the other side. I need to guarantee that my towers are directly across from each other and therefore our bars are going to be parallel. Once you have everything set in place, just make sure that your rubber pads are cradled properly, that they're gonna fit on there just perfectly. If you need to take 'em off and make some slight adjustments to how far or how close the towers are, go right ahead. But once you get it to where it's supposed to be and it's cradled nicely, go ahead and take this bolt and the washers off and then you're gonna take one of your clamps. Now the clamps for the front bar are going to be stamped right here, 134. There's a different clamp that goes on the back, so make sure that you're paying attention to that. But this is gonna fit right over like that. Now that it's on there, I'm gonna go ahead and take my bolt and I'm gonna thread it in. Now I'm gonna hold this clamp in place as I thread it in and I'm just gonna get it to where it's snug. I don't wanna really tighten anything down just quite yet. Once it's on there and it's snug, there is a tool that INNO provides you. Looks just like this. It's a torquing hex tool, so you're just gonna assemble it just like that. And I'm gonna start tightening down. Now what I'm not gonna do is I'm not gonna tighten down all the way on one side before tightening down the other. If I tighten this side all the way down, there's a decent chance of the other side kind of getting knocked loose. At that point, you gotta undo everything kinda remeasure and replace. So I'm gonna give it maybe, you know, three or four good turns over here, go over to the passenger side and do the same, and I'm gonna work my way back and forth and tighten it down incrementally. So we're gonna hear a loud crack kind of pop sound like that when we've got it tightened down all the way. Once it's on there, I like to give it a good shake. You know, if the car is moving back and forth, but nothing is shifting on my towers or on my bar, I know I've got a secure hold on it. And at this point it's the last step in the installation, which is to put on our tower cover. But before I do, I just wanna point out that INNO does provide you with keys and metal lock cores. The reason this is important is because a lot of roof rack manufacturers really give you kind of a cheap plastic core. You can get it open with a coin or with a flathead screwdriver and you have to buy these metal locks separate. INNO is nice enough to provide those right outta the box, but these are side specific as well. You'll see an L or and R stamped right under the hood like that, and you could always tell because INNO on this rack, the locks are gonna face the rear of the vehicle. So once we have the correct one, it's just gonna slip right into place just like that. I can lock 'em up. So that was it. Pretty easy installation. You could do it all on your own and be able to enjoy this on all of your trips and all of your adventures. But if after watching this video you've still got questions about this roof rack, go ahead and drop those in the comments below. We would love to answer those questions for you and share them with other neighbors just like you so they can make the best decision for themselves. Once again, this is Curt with etrailer. Thanks for stopping by.
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